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How to Start Google

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Start Google

#11

Post by noufalibrahim »

shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

I think you're being overly harsh.

14 year old need good role models (preferably from their trusted social circles). These people should, ideally before the child turns 14, give him or her a strong moral framework to judge advice that they might come across.

On the topic of being rich (which can be a good goal if pursued along with a strong moral compass), it's much better to take advice from a Paul Graham rather from some grifter selling courses on "how to be a rich as me" on the net.

Re: How to Start Google

#12

Post by random3 »

shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

Genuinely curious to understand your line of reasoning.

- Concretly what's the late-stage capitalism nightmare? How do you define it and what do you compare it against?

- What do you define what PG is concretely telling kids and how that's related to what you describe as capitalism nightmare.

Finally, would you care to share some examples of better scenarios that could inspire advice for 14-year olds?

Re: How to Start Google

#13

Post by scarface_74 »

ericd wrote: post #9
shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

He's telling kids that they don't have to get a job, and one of the key objections is obviously going to be "but how will I get money". The emphasis in the essay is not getting rich, it's that it's a much more interesting path. And it is.

And then they hit the reality that thier startup is going to fail, even if they get funding in a non zero interest rate environment and they would have been better off just “grinding leetCode and working for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions) or even just working as a CRUD/Enterprise Corp dev and still be able to make the median household income in the US a couple of years out of school

Re: How to Start Google

#14

Post by elwell »

> But the more arbitrary a test, the more it becomes a test of mere determination and resourcefulness.

So Leetcode is actually a good way to hire?

Re: How to Start Google

#15

Post by vouaobrasil »

>It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich.

> You might have thought I was joking when I said I was going to tell you how to start Google. You might be thinking "How could we start Google?" But that's effectively what the people who did start Google were thinking before they started it.

We shouldn't be telling young people to start companies like Google or to aim for being really rich in the first place. We should be teaching children how to be more sustainable. Companies like Google are a net harm to society and the really rich like Sergey Brin and Larry Page are parasites, promoting the unsustainable ruthless capitalism that has caused the immense climactic problems of the world today.

Re: How to Start Google

#16

Post by DavidSJ »

hiddencost wrote: post #2

"If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies." "Of the 137 people in the global study who achieved billionaire status in the 12-month study period, 53 of them inherited $150.8 billion collectively, more than the $140.7 billion that was earned by the 84 new self-made billionaires in the same time period, the UBS…

"Of the 137 people in the global study who achieved billionaire status in the 12-month study period, 53 of them inherited $150.8 billion collectively, more than the $140.7 billion that was earned by the 84 new self-made billionaires in the same time period, the UBS study says.Nov 30, 2023"

The citation for this quote appears to be https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/11/30/new-bil... , but I don't believe that limits to those "that occasionally get published in the press".

Re: How to Start Google

#17

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

He said "more exciting" at the beginning of your quote. And if the 14-year-olds somehow don't already want to be rich, how is Paul Graham telling them how to do it going to teach them that it is the most important thing?

Re: How to Start Google

#18

Post by suyash »

Ok, so I am having a hard time buying the idea that just make a fun project if you want to create a something like 'Google'. Startup 101 teaches us that you need to solve a painful problem that lot of people have, that is the best way to create 'Google', so isn't the advise contradictory?

Re: How to Start Google

#19

Post by fakedang »

shafyy wrote: post #4

> It's more exciting to work on your own project than someone else's. And you can also get a lot richer. In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich. If you look at the lists of the richest people that occasionally get published in the press, nearly all of them did it by starting their own companies. People like Paul Graham telling 14-year-olds that basically getting rich is the most important thing is one o…

Exactly.

>In fact, this is the standard way to get really rich.

No. The standard way of getting "rich" is to get into a good career that pays a lot. Before Silicon Valley, people got "rich" by working at Wall Street, law or Congress. Getting rich through business is a lottery.

I would have attributed this article from Graham to relative inexperience had he written this early on, say in the 2000s. But him writing this now is just bad-faith preaching intended to give VCs another lottery ticket with a very low success probability of forming a unicorn.

And for the record, 14 and 15 year olds, the best way to get rich is still Wall Street, Congress or law.

Re: How to Start Google

#20

Post by benzible »

> So Mark Zuckerberg shows up at Harvard in 2003, and the university still hasn't gotten the facebook online. [...] But Mark is a programmer. He looks at this situation and thinks "Well, this is stupid. I could write a program to fix this in one night. Just let people upload their own photos and then combine the data into a new site for the whole university." So he does. And almost literally overnight he has thousands of users.

Kinda, but this skips over the whole Facemash thing https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creat...

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